Where did my voice go?

The Unbearable Confidence of Men in the Pub.

• Women.
• Equality.
• Barbie.
• Vegans.
• 9/11 Conspiracy theories.
• Climate Change.
• The Dark Web.

Believe it or not all of these topics were covered by a man I do not know and had never met before last Friday night in my local pub in the space of about 45 minutes.

Friday had been one of those relaxing school holiday days, I’d slept in, watched some tv and spent the afternoon reading – it was safe to say I was pretty relaxed, I even said as much to my husband as we walked to our local pub. We were meeting our friends there to catch up after our respective holidays but when we arrived they’d already been joined by a man and a woman, similar age to us all mid/late 30s, white, middle class. It turns out that they were our friends’ old neighbours and they’d sat down a few minutes before we arrived. Not knowing them ourselves we all said polite hellos and we joined them. My husband and I started talking to one of our friends and the other remained in conversation with the other couple; it was when I heard the phrase ‘Yeah, it looked alright from the outside but then we went in and it was all vegan. Pfft. What a load of shit. So, we walked out.’ That my ‘idiot –alert’ buzzer started sounding internally. We then had to overhear a 5-minute rant about vegans being a waste of space, pathetic and a few other choice descriptions whilst I drank a glass of rose as quick as humanly possible and looked for an ejector seat.

Next, this man (not our friend, who looked painfully uncomfortable throughout a lot of this exchange) began to talk about videos he had been watching that day on the dark web. ‘You can find it all on there you know. All these original TV interviews and coverage of world events that haven’t been doctored and cut and edited by the BBC and the government. Everything they show us on TV is fake you know.’ By this point my relaxing day was starting to slip from my grasp as he ploughed on to talk about 9/11 conspiracy theories and how it was all a set up by the American government.

At one point I must have learned to block him out before my ears pricked up at the mention of ‘Barbie’, we had seen it the night before and both loved it. ‘She (his girlfriend) wants to go and see that ‘Barbie’ movie but it’s just an anti-men fest apparently, lefty nonsense.’ At this point I could be quiet no more, ‘It isn’t anti-men,’ I said, praying for more wine and the same level of confidence as this man, ‘It’s anti-patriarchy. It actually raises some excellent points about how patriarchy damages men too. If anything, it’s about equality. You should go and see it. Don’t just believe what Piers Morgan tells you.’

At that point the conversation moved on. My husband doesn’t like conflict; it makes him anxious so I do my best to stay out of difficult conversations when he’s with me but I had begun to seriously bristle at this point. He moved on to climate change – the less said about his opinions on this the better but I’m sure you can imagine his ‘anti-woke’ stand point. Then he delivered the clanger; the moment where I texted my husband (who was sitting next to me – don’t judge, you’ve all done it!) and said ‘I cannot sit here anymore. We need to move when our friends leave.’ His girlfriend said ‘Are we having one more drink?’ to which he replied ‘Yep. Off you go, you can’t expect equal rights and then not go to the bar yourself.’

….

Reader, with my wine glass half-way to my mouth, I GUFFAWED and my eyes rolled so far back I was worried they’d never return to normal. He looked at me, my friends looked at me. No-one said anything. Nothing more was said on the subject and not long after, they left. I was physically shaking with suppressed anger. I’m not a person who gets into conflict but in that moment I wanted to be in conflict with him, I wanted to challenge him, I wanted to call him out, I wanted to tell his girlfriend to run far, far away. Instead, I sat and seethed and tried not to let him ruin my evening.

Later that night I was disappointed with myself. As someone who is a fierce feminist and proud to be ‘woke’ when, let’s be honest, all woke means is caring about others, I wish I had said something to him but I didn’t. I wasn’t afraid of him but my voice, in comparison to his, felt small and squeaky and unsure. And all my knowledge, all the facts and research I have in my head that I could have used ceased to exist because in that moment, faced with someone who had literally no qualms about peddling his anti-feminism, anti-woke opinions to people he’d never met before I didn’t know where to start and I lost my voice.

Why Girls Can’t Win – How school expectations unfairly affect girls.

No false eyelashes.

Natural make-up only.

No long/fake nails.

No outrageous hair colours.

No fake tan.

Policed skirt length.

Research from PACEY (Professional Association of Childcare and Early Years) suggests that young people begin to become aware of their body image from the age 3-4, with 71% of childcare professionals believing that children are becoming anxious about their body image at a younger age. This anxiety continues into adolescence with a survey by the Mental Health Foundation reporting that body anxiety disproportionately effects girls, with 46% of girls saying that their body image caused them worry, compared to 25% of boys.

Patriarchal expectations of women have long affected our mental health and attitudes towards our bodies. Let alone costing us a lot of money. Expectations to be thin, have no cellulite, perfect hair, not age, remove any other hair that isn’t on our head and dress ‘sexy’ to attract male attention has led to increased rates of eating disorders and cases of body dysmorphia amongst women and girls. This is a societal problem that most of the time feels too big to overcome. But what of our schools?

Most school uniform policies state expectations such as: No false nails, no false eyelashes, natural make up only or no make up at all, knee length skirts. All incredibly reasonable in context. But the problem is society and social media are sending our teenage girls one message: You need to wear make-up, fake eyelashes, fake nails etc. in order to be attractive and/or compete with other girls and then when girls come to school with these things and we pull them out of lessons to tell them to take them off, or worse, send them home to take them off this results in lost learning time. This puts our teenage girls in a ‘damned if you do, damned if you don’t’ limbo, where they feel shame for their decisions about how they look. A vicious cycle linked to their self-worth.

How are young women supposed to navigate the very confusing and contradictory messages that they receive from birth? As Soma Sara writes in her book ‘Everyone’s Invited’, ‘Appearing desirable and beautiful is a good thing, a source of power and validation we are told. But equally there are messages of shame and victim-blaming around the body; imploring us to cover up, change our clothes, to compress, restrict, and suppress ourselves, become invisible. To be both Madonna and whore all at once.’

How do we fix the problem?

• Be aware of the language that you use when speaking to female pupils about their appearance – recognise any internalized misogyny.
• Include girls in any decisions about skirts, make up, hair etc. (ask their opinions and listen)
• Don’t remove girls from lessons to talk to them about what they are wearing, do this at break time, lunch time, before or after school.
• Don’t shame girls for the length of their skirts.
• Don’t make sarcastic comments about anything to do with a teenage girl’s appearance.
• If you are going to ask girls to remove what the school rules consider to be ‘excessive’ makeup – provide the products they need to do this in school.

Teens, TikTok and Andrew Tate.

Children as young as 10-11 (possibly younger) are aware of the name Andrew Tate, they may not fully understand the controversial figure and what he stands for, but they do recognize the name. Worryingly, some do know what he stands for and post-pandemic his name has begun to drip-feed through school corridors and playgrounds.

So, how have our young people become exposed to him? A 36-year-old, ex-kickboxer who boasts about dating younger women because they are more likely to have been untouched by other men and believes that women are the property of their partner. His content and message is entirely inappropriate for our young people so how has it even reached them?

The simple answer is social media. That dark entity that lurks in the shadows as a very real and threatening problem to teenage mental health. In August when Andrew Tate first appeared on a lot of teachers’ radars he had 11 billion views on TikTok; data gathered by ‘Social Shepherd’ shows that kids surveyed in both the US and UK spend an average of 75 minutes a day on TikTok, eclipsing the amount of time they spend on other social media sites, making it their go-to social media platform. But what makes TikTok different?

TikTok’s main user base is between the ages of 10-29, with 10-19 year olds making up 24% of users in the UK and it has faced a lot of criticism since its creation in 2016, especially when it comes to dangerous challenges that its algorithm has given rise to, such as the ‘Benadryl Challenge’ and the ‘Blackout Challenge’, which led to at least one death. And herein lies our problem with the kind of content our young people are viewing…the algorithm.

The TikTok algorithm works unlike any other social media platform in that as soon as you create an account your ‘For You Page’ (FYP) is immediately populated with videos that are considered ‘most popular’ across the app – this means, if Andrew Tate’s videos (being pushed by subscribers to his ‘Hustlers University’) are popular on TikTok at that time, there’s a higher chance that they will appear on your FYP, no matter who you are. It’s only when you begin using the app more frequently that the content becomes customized to you, this of course, brings its own set of dangers. In an article written in ‘The Guardian’ in October 2022 it was stated, ‘Studies show that when chronological feeds are discarded in favor of suggested content, the algorithm frequently gives rise to more extreme views’ and a report commissioned in 2021 showed 70% of extremist content found on YouTube was recommended to users via their algorithm. This then incentivizes users to share attention-grabbing content because it gets more attention from users.

So, what has all this got to do with Andrew Tate? By and large the young people that we teach have been exposed to Tate through social media and some clever marketing. At the beginning of his rise to ‘fame’ Tate tapped into a very specific group of internet users; men who were feeling lost, insecure, and unsure of their place in the world. He offered them motivational messages, something to aim for and promoted himself as ‘wanting to help’ men become as ‘successful’ as him – mainly having enough money to buy a lot of cars, it seems. Once followers had been encouraged to subscribe to his ‘Hustler’s University’ for a hefty fee part of their job was to populate the internet with videos featuring him, edit and cut longer interviews and swamp social media pages with his content. Tate himself, didn’t even have to have his own social media page on some sites, the work was being done for him by his followers. If you take into account how algorithms work, especially on TikTok the chances of our young people coming across his content is pretty high. There is an excellent chapter in Laura Bates’ ‘Men Who Hate Women’, titled ‘Men who take advantage of other men’, that is exactly what Tate has done, and now that he’s been reinstated on social media sites, continues to do.

One of the main problems with teenagers and young people being exposed to Andrew Tate is that a lot of them think he is one of two things:

1. Someone to aspire to be like. Especially his cars and money.
2. Someone who they don’t take seriously, and therefore find funny.

Both of these are deeply problematic but for different reasons. The version of masculinity that Tate promotes is rooted in toxicity and the patriarchal role that men have been forced to endure the pressures of for centuries – in order to be a ‘man’ you must go to the gym, have muscles, be strong, earn lots of money, get married, have kids, provide for a family. If you are struggling then you are weak, if you cry or show any kind of emotion then, in Tate’s own words ‘Men who live without self-control are the kind of men who cry when their girlfriend cheats on them, cause she doesn’t respect a little cry baby’. At this point I’ll state that the leading cause of death in men under the age of 45 in the UK is suicide.

The second problem is perhaps harder to unpick because it’s easy to dismiss boys finding him funny as meaning they think he’s an idiot and aren’t therefore listening to his views, this isn’t the case. Men like Tate, Jeremy Clarkson and Piers Morgan are gateway misogynists; they masquerade as ‘challengers’, people who have ‘alternative’ views and are therefore ‘controversial’ – the things they say are treated as satire, and to challenge them is met with a barrage of ‘Oh, no-one can take a joke these days! He doesn’t mean it!’ – but faced with that kind of content on a regular basis, through a TikTok account, Twitter feed or the pages of a newspaper it quickly becomes normalized, and over time the misogynistic views that were once laughed at begin to be taken more seriously, perhaps the person viewing them finds themselves agreeing and from there that tiny spark begins to grow into a much bigger beast.

And within that beast lies an uncomfortable truth of modern discourse. That, especially for the alt-Right, words are contagious and language is a weapon. Trump was a master of it. Morgan likes to think he is. Regardless of the supposed intent of the language used, and the protestations when it is called out; whether it is ‘self-help’, whether it is ‘a joke’, or whether it is outright hate, social media allows us to chop it up, edit it, recontextualise it, frame it in whatever way suits our narrative. Young people, young boys may laugh at Tate’s nonsense, but the language still exists, it permeates, and we need to address its implications.

Lets talk about sex…ism.

I’ve been teaching for 12 years; I’ve worked in two schools but visited many. I’ve been a teacher, a Head of Year and now a Lead Practitioner. Here’s some things that have happened to me during the last 12 years in my career at various points:

• I’ve asked groups of students to put rubbish in the bin and been ignored/laughed at.
• I’ve been called a ‘bitch’.
• I’ve asked pupils to not sit on stairs at breaktime, or to clear a corridor, and I’ve been ignored.
• I’ve organised meetings with parents where the parents have only addressed the male member of staff in the room with me, despite me being the Head of Year.
• I’ve been asked if I’m on my period because ‘You’re in a bad mood today’.

All of these are sexist microaggressions. Is sexism the only factor in each of these scenarios? Of course not. Each individual instance here has its own context BUT to deny that sexism isn’t a contributing factor is very naïve.

Last night I tweeted about sexism in schools, I knew I was opening myself up to a litany of interesting comments in response to the tweet but it was a real experience that I have had in my teaching career (not at my current school) and I wanted to make it clear that sexist behaviour does exist in schools. Within minutes the responses were coming in saying that the issue isn’t always sexism, it’s about authority, some kids are more likely to listen to the person with the greater authority asking them to do something. I agree with this, all schools have a hierarchy and though I don’t agree with it Headteachers, Assistant Principals, Heads of Behaviour/Year are, oftentimes, more likely to be listened to/obeyed than other members of staff, especially support staff who can sometimes be treated awfully in comparison to teaching staff, but what if we remove authority from this scenario?

A female teacher on break duty asks a group of teenagers to put the rubbish from their table in the bin before they leave; the group laugh, ignore and begin to walk away. A male member of staff with no greater position of authority stops the group and tells them to go back and pick up the litter, they do. It’s very hard to claim that there isn’t an element of sexism in that scenario, yet people, other teachers and educators are telling me that there isn’t. And therein lies the problem, denying the existence of the sexism in the first place. Is it intended sexism? Maybe not. Is it so engrained in society to respect a female voice less than a male voice? Yes. Denying that that is the case is simply burying one’s head in the sand.

Overall, my tweet was responded to in the comments, mostly by men (and that is just a fact, go back and look at the comments) saying that there are other factors at play, not just sexism, but it was retweeted mostly by women, female teachers/learning support assistants/support staff who shared their own experiences, their own stories of everyday sexism at work. By closing down any discussion about the possibility of defiance being influenced by sexism we are invalidating these womens’ experiences and that can’t be okay, can it?

I want to finish on a positive because there are always positives to be found and there were lots of great male educators in the comments asking what they could do to support female staff when they witness sexism. These are some things I’d suggest:

• Acknowledge that sexism exists.
• Talk to your female colleagues – Ask them if they’ve experienced any sexism in school and show your support.
• If you witness sexism in school, be an ally and support the female member of staff. Have the conversation with pupils about the importance of following instructions whether they come from a male or female member of staff.
• Model males supporting females as often as possible e.g. If you’re a male member of staff, seek opportunities to talk to students about sexism, how to recognise it and challenge it.

A love letter to ECTs.

One of the reasons I love twitter so much is that as the new school year begins my timeline floods with pictures of fresh classroom displays, shiny new planners, colour coded timetables and people starting their first year as qualified teachers. Seeing people excited to begin what is arguably the best job in the world can be infectious. A significant portion of these posts will come from ECTs and as the first few weeks get going, the classes arrive, the workload begins and the colder, darker nights draw in it can be hard to maintain the same enthusiasm you had in the late summer days of August. We’ve all seen the statistics published by the DfE that show a third of teachers leave the profession before the end of 5 years, so this is my short love letter to you all about how to keep a grip on your joy through your first year;

1. Get to know your school policies…and use them.

With any luck your school should have a clear and robust behaviour policy and you shouldn’t feel the need to come up with your own. Learn it as soon as possible and don’t be afraid to use it. Teachers can sometimes worry that using the policy implies they have poor classroom management or don’t want to be seen as not being able to handle behaviour and so therefore avoid using it. It is your greatest weapon. Along with consistency. Pupils should know the policy but, if you want/need to, remind them of it as often as you need to.

2. Shut out the noise!

Twitter is an excellent resource for teachers. Twitter is also noisy. What you need to remember is that everyone has opinions but they don’t always know each other’s contexts. For every post you see about someone spending the day in school doing displays for their room there will be another post saying how pointless displays are. You can only do what is right for you. Which brings me nicely to my next point.

3. Follow your instincts.

Only you know what is best for you and your classroom. When we are training we are often encouraged to keep a ‘Reflection Diary’ or other document where after each lesson we review its success. It’s actually one of the most useful parts of training, in my opinion. However, once the year starts to get busy it can be something that you no longer have time for, whilst you may not have time to write a ‘diary entry’ about how your lessons have gone that day it can be useful to metaphorically ‘download your day/week’, what did work? What didn’t work? What needs to be tweaked? What else could you try? If your gut tells you that something is/isn’t right, follow it.

4. You will never get it all done…go home.

For the first few years of my career I got to school for 7.30am, I left around 6pm and at the weekends I took mountains of books home which I then spent my entire Sunday ‘marking’, by marking I mean writing almost half a page of feedback that pupils then didn’t read and promptly had no effect on their progress, to me though it proved that I was working hard when someone did a book scrutiny. Unsurprisingly I grew to loath Sundays and I resented my job. I did this because for years the rhetoric around teaching has been that unless you are spending every waking hour working you aren’t a very good teacher, being stressed and tired was what I thought I should be. LIES. It can be tricky and will take time but find a way of working that is manageable for you. There will always be ‘just one more thing’ that you can do before you go home…and it will still be there in the morning.

4. Enjoy it! You are allowed!

I love being a teacher. I love my classes. I love reading books about teaching. I love going to conferences about teaching. I love the science behind teaching. But over the years I have been casually mocked and in some cases insulted by colleagues who say it’s sad or that I need to get a life. I call them mood hoovers because just being around them sucks the life out of a room, and you. You will at some point come across a mood hoover. When that happens remember, you are ALLOWED to enjoy your job and no-one should make you feel bad for that. If you want to colour code your timetable, do it. If you want to run an extra-curricular group, do it! If you want to share a teaching and learning strategy with staff, do it! Because it’s a pretty wonderful job.

A few extra tips:

• Find your person/people. There will always be someone in school that you vibe with.
• Say ‘Hello’ to EVERYONE. Easiest way to make friends.
• Make time for your own passions and hobbies outside of work still.
• Speak to your HOD/SLT if you need to, they are there to look after you too.
• Be brave, try new things in your classroom. They don’t have to always work.
• Always make time for lunch!

And finally, established members of staff can learn a lot from ECTs, don’t be afraid to share your views and make suggestions, your input is just as valuable!

Have an amazing year!

The Top 10 Most Important Quotations in Jekyll and Hyde – Analysed – Part 1.

1. ‘The packet slept in the innermost corner of his private safe.’ – Description of Jekyll’s will in Utterson’s safe.

Jekyll and Hyde is rooted in concealment. The novella itself is a mystery and this quotation from chapter one demonstrates Stevenson highlighting the theme. Firstly, let’s focus on the verb ‘slept’. When we are sleeping there is the potential for us to wake up at any moment, here the verb is being used in relation to Jekyll’s will, something that may not be needed for a long time but ‘slept’ suggests it could ‘wake’ sooner than we think. This could also allude to the beast (Hyde) asleep inside all of us, not just Jekyll. We all have a ‘Hyde’ inside of us, it’s what happens if we let it out.

Consider also that the packet is in the ‘innermost corner’ of Utterson’s ‘Private safe’ – the will is buried towards the back, it is essentially hidden from view – much like Hyde. Zooming in on the adjective ‘private’ we could ask ourselves why Stevenson feels the need to include this here, we presume a safe is private don’t we? Perhaps then this safe is ‘private’ to Utterson, it isn’t a safe that he regularly uses for his cases it is instead separate; perhaps indicating his closeness to Jekyll and his desire to keep his dealings with his friend separate from regular work.

2. ‘My devil had been long caged, he came out roaring.’ – Dr Jekyll describes turning into Hyde after keeping him away for so long.

The final chapter of the novella acts as a denouement. The narrative voice switches to that of Jekyll, after all he is the only one who can finally provide us with all the answers we need to solve the mystery of his connection to Hyde. It is therefore unsurprising that a lot of ‘key quotations’ can be taken from this chapter.

Here let’s first focus on the phrase ‘my devil’. Jekyll clearly views Hyde as his own personal devil. Having been obsessed with the idea of separating the two sides of his personality and finally managing it, we know by this point that Hyde was much stronger than Jekyll ever imagined him to be, essentially it could be argued that Hyde now ‘owns’ Jekyll. Also take into account the implications of having associations with the devil. Knowing that the devil played a vital role in Victorian belief systems, Stevenson’s frequent comparisons of Hyde to the devil wouldn’t have gone unnoticed by Victorian audiences.

Add to this the verbs ‘caged’ and ‘roaring’ and Jekyll presents Hyde as animalistic, something uncontrollable and untamable which, by this point in the novella we know Hyde is. Jekyll has no power over Hyde in the end. Links could also be made here to the theme of ‘Repression’; Jekyll is repressed, Hyde is repressed, so was a lot of Victorian society, something Stevenson fought against.

3. ‘Edward Hyde would pass away like the stain of breath upon a mirror.’ – Jekyll recalling how easy it was to pretend that Hyde wasn’t real.

Continuing with chapter 10 and ‘Henry Jekyll’s Full Statement of the Case’ – and one of my favourite quotations. At this point in the chapter Jekyll describes how exciting it was to be Hyde, how Hyde provided him with endless opportunities to behave in ways well-respected Henry Jekyll never would. Finally, the repression that Jekyll felt he was drowning in was lifted by becoming Hyde. What I love about this quotation is the phrase ‘like the stain of breath upon a mirror’ – the biggest draw of being Hyde is that technically he doesn’t exist. Jekyll can commit any crime, any deviance he wants and no-one will be able to trace him – this is hugely alluring to Jekyll as he himself admits earlier in the chapter when he says, ‘the pleasures which I made haste to seek in my disguise were, as I have said, undignified’.

Looking more closely at this phrase it could also be suggested that Hyde was considered insignificant by Jekyll at the beginning of his creation, he wasn’t something that Jekyll had to worry about, he simply became him when it suited and eliminated him just as easily until Hyde began to gain more control and power, something Jekyll never considered. A contextual reading here might suggest that Stevenson is offering a critique of the privilege and entitlement of the middle classes affording Jekyll an alibi. Nobody would suspect a wealthy and influential doctor would they?

4. ‘The fog slept over the drowned city.’ –  Description of the London smog

Stevenson has been critcised in the past for not setting Jekyll and Hyde in Edinburgh when the streets of the city were of such inspiration to him, instead choosing to set it in London but when we consider the poverty ridden streets of the capital, with it’s constant smog and filthy back streets it seems the fitting choice for Stevenson’s tale.

Stevenson continues the motif of concealment through his descriptions of Victorian London, the ‘fog’ is so thick that it hides wickedness and evil deeds. The verb ‘slept’ is used again by Stevenson and there are several connotations to make here: Much like the packet in Mr Utterson’s safe the fog is personified as ‘sleeping’ suggesting it won’t be around forever but whilst it is it conceals everything, similarly to Mr Hyde; who also won’t be around forever. If we stretch this even further and include the verb ‘drowned’ we could interpret this is a comment about the suppressed nature of London and Stevenson’s argument against the repression of mankind.

5. ‘With ape-like fury, he was trampling his victim under foot.’ – Hyde killing Sir Danvers Carew

A well-known quotation but an important one nonetheless. Prior to this we have only heard about Hyde’s violence via the Mr Enfield in chapter 1, the reader hasn’t actually witnessed it themselves. Ahead of the attack on Sir Danvers Carew we are treated to a dinner party with the pleasant and well-liked Dr Jekyll and there is not a hint of violence. It is important to note that the beginning of chapter 4 informs us that this is ‘nearly a year’ later – consider the timeline – Jekyll discourages Utterson from discussing his connection to Hyde any further in chapter 3, referring to him as ‘poor Hyde’ and insisting that he has a ‘very great interest’ in him – at this point it’s possible that Jekyll is only at the beginning of his dalliances with Hyde and is still enjoying the thrill.

Then comes Hyde’s unprovoked (as far as we know) attack on Sir Danvers. Once again Stevenson uses animalistic adjectives in ‘ape-like’, a frequent occurrence throughout the novella suggesting Hyde isn’t truly human, he is wild and untameable (something which we know to ultimately be true). Perhaps here Stevenson is drawing on public anxieties about science and the ethics of discovery. We know that Darwin’s Theory of Evolution was published in 1859 and unsettled religious Victorian society, tie this in with the fact that the attack takes place in a London street under the cover of darkness and this contributes to the sense of urban terror.

By definition the verb ‘trampled’ means ‘to tread on and crush’. Hyde doesn’t kill Sir Danvers simply, it is a deeply violent attack that demonstrates his wild, untameable strength and force. It also suggests indulgent abandon, Hyde enjoys the killing. Stevenson presents Hyde as a ‘creature’, a threat to humanity, utterly at home in the darkness of London.

Classroom Approach: It’s important to explain that I chose these quotations based on a few key factors: I wanted the quotations to be short and therefore easy to recall, I wanted the quotations to be flexible and applicable to most questions that could come up on the exam paper and I wanted the quotations to be ‘juicy’, ones that I knew pupils would be able to analyse with confidence and in detail.

Part 2 coming soon…

All hail the Visualiser.

If there is one piece of tech it’s worth asking your HOD to invest in this year it’s a visualiser.

Scrap that.

It’s many visualisers.

At least one between two for the staff within your department. Here’s a list of day-to-day uses for it meaning you can start as soon as one is in your possession:

1. Modelling Work – No matter what the ability of your class we know that modelling is essential if we want pupils to understand what is required of them. Sure, this can be done on a whiteboard with a pen but it can also be done, in a much more controlled way with unlimited space, under a visualiser.

Example 1: I want year 7 to write about an extract from Private Peaceful. First of all I show them a paragraph I have pre-written on the board, walk them through it and ask them to copy it down – ‘I DO’. Next, I go under the visualiser and we write the next paragraph together, live, the pupils tell me what to write and together we write the next paragraph – ‘WE DO’. Finally, I ask them to write the next two paragraphs alone, using the two examples they now have in their books to guide them – ‘YOU DO’.

Example 2: I want year 11 to read, highlight and annotate an extract from An Inspector Calls, specifically looking at how Eric is presented. Firstly, we look at it under the visualiser. We discuss together which lines stand out to us, I choose one, highlight it and we decide the annotation together. Then I ask them to find 4 more.

2. Annotation of Texts – This year we have given all of our KS4 pupils copies of An Inspector Calls and Macbeth. Each time we read the text I put it under the visualiser, we read it and I annotate the text live with key notes and points, I add the pupils’ thoughts and opinions too based on my questioning and their observations. This way I know that every pupil in the class has a fully annotated copy of the text for GCSE. This is also helpful when you have a pupil absent, as when they return you can photocopy your own notes or ask the pupil to copy them from your own copy of the text.

3. Regrouping – We’ve all had moments when we start pupils off on a task and within a few minutes we know that a significant number of the pupils aren’t getting it. At this point, stop everyone, draw their attention back to the board and you can then model exactly what you want under the visualiser.

4. Live Feedback – If a pupil within the class is producing some excellent work that is ticking all of the boxes, with their permission of course, put it under the visualiser for the rest of the class to see and appreciate. Focus in on specific bits that work really well and explain why, perhaps creating a brief success criteria for the rest of the class to check their work against. What also works well is choosing a piece of work that is good but could be improved, again, with the pupil’s permission put it underneath the visualiser and as a class offer suggestions about how that pupil could improve/add to/extend their work. Give it back, pupil instantly responds.

Visualiser Books

Finally, get yourself a ‘Visualiser Book’ aka. A spare exercise book from the cupboard. Each time you model something for pupils under the visualiser, do it in your ‘Visualiser Book’ that way you have a copy of all the modelling you have done for the whole year that you can use again and that you can photocopy should any pupils be absent, join the class or lose work.

Where do I get one?

We started with one visualiser in our department two years ago, we then bought 2 more last year, we’ve now just ordered 6 more. You don’t have to have a huge department budget, they range from £50-700. Someone also told me that you can download one as an app on your phone! The ones we have at the moment were £80 and we feel that they do the job just fine. As is life, the more money you spend the fancier the features but the ones we have do exactly what we need them to.

The best thing to do is shop around and find one that works within your price range for your department set up: https://www.amazon.co.uk/Visualiser-Classroom/s?k=Visualiser+Classroom

I hope the above ideas help you get started, enjoy your flourishing relationship with your visualiser!

For examples from my visualiser book check my Twitter handle: @TeacherBusy

Let’s crack on!

Leicestershire schools returned this week (Monday 24th), with pupils returning to us gradually from Wednesday onward. Year 7, 12 and 13 Wednesday, Year 7, 11, 12 and 13 Thursday and Year 8,9 and 10 Friday. There was a crackle of excitement in the air on Monday as staff saw each other for the first time in 5 months and that crackle turned into a roaring fire on Wednesday when the pupils arrived.

Obviously things were different in order to keep everyone safe, obviously things will take some getting used to, pupils sanitising their hands and wiping their tables down etc but nothing that we won’t be used to in a week or two. School felt safe, school felt, well…like school but with a bit more distance between us and a generous amount of hand washing.

What hasn’t changed for me though is clear and consistent routines and focused learning. When I had my first year 7 class on Thursday afternoon I had mentally been planning the lesson in my head for about two weeks (such was my excitement). I’d introduce myself, check that everyone was feeling okay/acknowledge that things have been very odd for all of us and explain my expectations to them, then…I’d crack on.

What I witnessed over the week was happy pupils who were keen for routine and a sense of ‘normality’, to me that doesn’t include extensive discussion of the lockdown period or Coronavirus. It includes quality teaching and learning.

I do want to make something explicitly clear here. I am fully aware that my context is probably completely different to some and there may well be situations where teaching staff feel they need to discuss what has happened with pupils in more detail. That’s fine, one size does not fit all.

Ahead of the rest of the country returning this week, I’ve listed a few of my recommended approaches and musings based on my own experience:

1. Reiterate rules and routines – Most pupils may not have experienced a school environment for 5 months, getting back into the swing of things may take time. For year 7s they’ll be in a completely new building and environment. Be clear about the basic rules and routines of the school and your classroom, equipment, behaviour etc. Refer back to them when appropriate e.g. A pupil talks over you. Ask them to stop and reiterate your expectations. Repeat to fade.
2. Be patient – Some pupils may not have picked up a pen in 5 months, they’re used to going to the toilet whenever they want (and so am I!). It’s been 5 months since they sat in a classroom for 5 hours and had to focus, it will be tiring. Don’t let it go, pick up on things like slouching, staring out of the window, lack of effort and reinforce your expectations again – their resilience will come back, with time. Sam Strickland’s ‘Warm Strict’ approach regarding school expectations is at the forefront of my mind here.
3. Crack on – It’s possible to show that you care and can provide support without spending a lot of time in lessons focusing on the lockdown period. That does not mean ‘pretend it never happened’, it means acknowledge it, signpost pupils to where they can get support, explain that we’re all in this together, we can all keep each other safe and be back in school learning as long as we are considerate of each other. Then get teaching! It’s what we need and want, it’s what pupils need and want. Start your usual schemes of work, start filling them with knowledge. Making sure not to cognitively overload them, that is.

After one week back in school the key word for me is balance. Pupils need to feel safe and listened to but they also need to learn and be challenged. They’ll be looking forward to it. Promise.

 

It’s time to stop attacking PowerPoint.

This week I read a blog that stated ‘PowerPoint makes you a lazy teacher’ and my immediate reaction was how dangerous this is as a statement.

The PowerPoint debate is one that creeps back in now and again at school, in CPD sessions and on Edutwitter – I’d even suggest that it’s become a bit of dirty word in some teaching circles but I’m here (hopefully) to defend it.

The reason this blog rattled me so much is because it suggests that in order to be a better teacher you have to ditch PowerPoint, the reason being it makes you lazy. Reading on the writer does have a point; he suggests that teachers ‘banging on a PowerPoint off TES’ is not a great model for teaching. Well, no, it’s not. But this, I would argue, is not a reason to demonise it.

PowerPoints done right have many benefits, here’s a few for teachers:

• Planning – Yes, they can take ages to make but PowerPoints have longevity. Once I’ve made it I know it’s there to go back to each year, I can adapt and update it but there is always somewhere to start.
• Starting in a new job – When I started at my current school two years ago I was teaching texts I hadn’t before; I had read them over the summer and knew them quite well but the Schemes of Work available were only outlines and suggestions on a Word document and I spent a lot of my first year planning from scratch – at this point I feel that I should say this is time well spent whenever teaching a text for the first time. I always felt that as a new member of staff in the school my life would have been a lot easier if there had been some simple PowerPoints that I could look at to get me started.
• Ordering your thoughts – Everybody plans differently, some write it all down, some use lesson templates, some have the amazing ability to walk into the classroom and just teach, with no plan and everything falls into place but sometimes, for me, my PowerPoint is my plan. I don’t mean that I stand at the front like a politician with a lectern dictating endless paragraphs of information for pupils to copy down but it’s handy for me to glance at every now and again to remind myself what my intentions are, where I’m going next etc (not to mention that if I teach 24 out of 30 lessons a week and it’s Friday period 5 I might be forgiven for needing to refresh my memory).
• Collaborative Planning and Well being – If you are an English teacher and you’re on Twitter I’d be shocked if you hadn’t heard of Lit Drive or Stuart Pryke. Lit Drive is a non-profit organisation set up to provide English and Media teachers the space to share resources and lessons with each other, founded by Kat Howard. Stuart is an English teacher and Subject Development Leader in Suffolk who shares the most incredible resources, all for free, on his Twitter page via Dropbox. His lessons are, mostly, available on PowerPoints that are of outstanding quality. Virtually everything shared in these arenas is on PowerPoint because it’s a universally used programme in schools that everyone can access and understand.

I said earlier that I did feel this blogger had a point. Using someone else’s PowerPoint is not great. Unless:

• You have read through it thoroughly and the content and tasks are appropriate for your class at that time.
• If the tasks aren’t appropriate you have tweaked the ppt to fit your class and your lesson.
• The slides are full of distractions – keep fonts simple, readable, avoid clutter on your slides, only the most important information should be visible and please, stay away from the Clip art. For everyone’s sake.

I know this blog post has focused mostly on the benefits of PowerPoint for teachers and not pupils. I’m sure that there is plenty of research out there that argues for and against the use of them in the classroom but really, I am speaking to teachers here.

Having a platform like Twitter and the opportunity to share your thoughts and opinions through blogging is fantastic but I worry about messages like this being read by new teachers, anxious teachers and teachers trying to do their best. Telling them that using PowerPoint makes you lazy and in order to be a better teacher you shouldn’t use it is not a sensible or helpful thing to say. Instead of saying ‘Don’t use PowerPoint’ we should be acknowledging that we all plan differently, we all teach differently, some of it works and some of it doesn’t. The most important part of our job as teachers is being reflective and recognising when we need to change something. Our contexts are all completely different and whilst research may suggest some teaching styles and methods are better than others it doesn’t mean that we should completely dismantle and demonise others.

You can use PowerPoint and be a really good teacher.

 

The One with the Curriculum.

One of the best things to come out of schools temporarily closing (I always try to find a positive where I can) is the amount of time I have to indulge in some serious CPD. I’ll confess that I do not have any children and I am grateful to have the time to do research and read a lot of books.

A couple of weeks ago ‘Lit Drive’ (If you’re an English teacher and haven’t yet heard of Lit Drive – get yourself signed up, immediately https://litdrive.org.uk/) announced they would be running a series of free remote CPD sessions on a Saturday morning. This week was the turn of Lit Drive founder Kat Howard who’s session would focus on curriculum design. I metaphorically pounced on that session.

When I became second in our English Department in September I knew that our curriculum was something I wanted to focus on, something I felt we could stretch, adapt and evolve but I’m still learning and so I did what anyone who is learning something new should do, turned to research, books and people who know a lot more then me!

I found Kat’s session one of the most useful pieces of CPD I have taken part in for a long time, it made me realise some things about myself as a teacher but also consider the idea that the curriculum is something that is constantly changing and that is how it should be. I wanted to outline my 3 key ‘Takeaways’ from the session.

1. ‘Oh, but the kids love it and I love teaching it.’ – We’ve all either said it or heard it. There are some novels, plays and poems I adore and have spent years building up resources for. I know that planning those lessons, for that text will take me less time because I have a mountain of good stuff but realistically, if we step back and look at ‘The Big Picture’, does that text logically fit into our curriculum? When you look at it alongside the other content how does it compliment pupils learning in year 8, year 9? Can pupils transfer the knowledge they’ll learn from reading say ‘Private Peaceful’ in year 7 through to year 8 and so on? Just because we love something and we have a lot of copies in the cupboard doesn’t mean it’s a good fit for the curriculum.
2. Sharing is Caring: Collaborative Planning – I am a control freak, I know it and so does everyone who knows me well. I am very much in the mind of ‘I’ll do it and then I know it’s done’ so when Kat made the point that English departments are teams not just one person it really stuck with me. It’s something I need to remember more often. I remember Anna Hunt (@ReynardannaAnna) saying to me ‘Everyone in your team is an expert at something. Help each other.’ And this is exactly what Kat says about the curriculum, it’s everyone’s job, get everyone involved. For example I feel very confident with ‘A View from the Bridge’ so I may plan a SOW on that but my knowledge of Gothic texts isn’t great so someone else in the team would be better off planning that. Play to your team’s strengths. That way the whole team can take ownership of the curriculum and everyone’s expertise can be drawn on. One thing that I think is really important though, and Kat mentioned this in the session, is that there is a clear and agreed standard that the SOWs all have to meet to ensure consistency across classes. Perhaps agreeing a basic template for lessons as a team would be a good place to start and making sure that lesson plans, designs, PowerPoints, however you choose to plan them are ‘quality assured’ by at least 2 members of the team.
3. GCSE at KS3: How to Assess – I include this as my final ‘takeaway’ purely because I’m not yet sure about it myself. Currently at KS3 we set ‘exam style’ questions as the ‘End of Unit’ assessment across our KS3. It makes sense to me, that whilst I’m not keen on turning KS3 into KS4 we include essay writing as formative assessments, I want to make sure that pupils can write fluently and confidently in preparation for the kind of lengthy writing tasks they face at KS4 BUT I don’t think this is perfect. I don’t think it necessarily provides pupils the opportunity to draw on the knowledge they’ve acquired (including that of previous years) and I think some pupils get overwhelmed when faced with the prospect of writing solidly for 40 minutes and proceed to forget everything they’ve learned over the last 6 weeks. A while back I read a blog that (I think!) might be have been written by Ben Newmark (@bennewmark), apologies if not, about year 7s writing essays in History, and how writing long essays actually results in repeated errors and stressed students, suggesting that actually, if we slowed down; taught pupils how to craft, edit and rewrite a paragraph at a time this would show much greater improvements in pupils essay writing. Making my end of unit assessment theory completely redundant, haha.

So, assessment at KS3 remains very much a focus for me, I think Kat mentioned in the session that she is still thinking about it and considering it herself. For now I ask myself, do KS3 really need exam style questions?

Thank you to Kat for the session and for letting me blog about it and my apologies to Ben if I have either misquoted you or that wasn’t your blog I read – but I’m almost certain it was. And thank you for reading, if you’ve made it this far!

The link to Kat’s session on her own blog can be found here: https://saysmiss.wordpress.com/downloadable-workshops/